Dining in Vicenza

I have never spent too much time on the food in Italy. That is partly because I know that Vicenza is not a big tourist destination, and a lot of the meals that we have are in homes anyway.

On previous trips, we stayed with my aunt - generally eating lunch and breakfast with her - and would have dinner with various aunts and uncles, usually their cooking. Once per trip we would go out, and it was usually a restaurant outside of town, unless it was a pizzeria. (And then they would always say that the pizza was not as good as if you went out of town.)

This time was different. Staying in the hotel, we were on our own for breakfast. The first day I got some things in the hotel store, but after that we stopped at a grocery store. I bought a loaf of bread, some prosciutto, a bag of oranges, and a few bananas, along with some bottled water, and we made our meals out of that.

We ate at houses a few times, but we went out a lot more. It still never occurred to me to take pictures of our food, though at some I took pictures of our family. On the Sunday before we went home (on a Tuesday), lunch and dinner both happened at absolutely gorgeous places with views, so I did take pictures, still not of the food. That's when I started to think maybe I should write about the restaurants.

Those both had "antica osteria" in their names, which gets translated to old taverns. The root word seems to be more like "hostel" perhaps focusing on board being provided as well, like the old public houses.

I am not sure how accurate that is for these places. The one looks like it could have started as a tavern, but the other seemed more like a converted house. Did they start out focusing on rooms and ale? I don't know.

For the next two posts, I will write about them, with lots of pictures of the place and what I remember about the food. For the other restaurants, I know the names of three of them, plus one gelato place. I may treat them all together or separate them out, depending on what information I can find.

I can try to come up with some other tips or observations, but for now I want to mention some of the places whose names I didn't get.

I had a really good Tyrolean salad in a bar one afternoon. That seems similar to our chef salad, with various protein sources in with the greens, but not tossed so much, so each type of food was somewhat distinct. That was nice because my mother said she wasn't hungry, but was wrong, and I could easily get her to try some of this or some of that. The bread was also quite good.

At a cafe in downtown they did not have the thing we ordered, but they ended up bringing us couscous with chicken and vegetables (mainly green beans). That was also good, and I might try making it here some time.

You can get good meals at pubs and cafes, but it is more likely to be a single course. If it is an actual restaurant, there will probably be primi piatti and secondi piatti - first and second courses, with it being typical to order from both sides of the menu, but not strictly required.

We went to at least one restaurant that appeared to change the menu seasonally, based on the featuring of asparagus in almost every dish, and its availability at roadside stands. Apparently asparagus and cherries are both in season around the end of May. It would be interesting to see how their menu changes over the year, but that was also the most expensive place we went to. (I know as the guests we weren't supposed to notice, but that was the only place I felt guilty.)

The other thing that is worth mentioning is that while I can only tell you the name of one gelateria, we had gelato many times. That's one great thing about being in Italy in warm weather: gelato is mandatory.